ТОП просматриваемых книг сайта:
The Discovery Of Slowness. Sten Nadolny
Читать онлайн.Название The Discovery Of Slowness
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781847677525
Автор произведения Sten Nadolny
Жанр Приключения: прочее
Серия Canons
Издательство Ingram
The wind rose and John started to freeze. He went below and stretched out on his bunk.
After a long, rapid talk with Dr Orme, Father had nodded and said something under his breath that started like this: ‘The first storm will …’ John knew what they thought. Dr Orme believed he wouldn’t be able to stand the rolling waves and would end up in the clergy; at least, that was his recommendation. Father hoped he’d be swept overboard. Mother wanted him to succeed in everything but wasn’t allowed to say so.
John’s look began to penetrate the black plank above his bunk, and soon he was the lost Matthew roaming through Terra Australis in the company of a lion. Later he became John Franklin again and told the people of Spilsby how to make their fields rise up so as to allow the land to sail away. But the wind pushed the land very hard, and along the road fissures opened with a creaking noise; everything burst asunder; everything was shaken up and turned topsy-turvy. John sat up, greatly concerned, and his head hit the black plank. Sweat covered his forehead. Next to his bunk stood a wooden bucket with iron strips round it, built like a small keg but twice as wide at the bottom as at the top. John was on a ship in the middle of the Bay of Biscay, in a storm.
Seasickness was out of the question. He was now set to solve a couple of arithmetical problems.
‘What’s the true time in Greenwich,’ he whispered, ‘when …’ For a moment he imagined those solid piers and imperturbable buildings with their firmly fastened, comfortable benches from which one could watch the ship traffic. He pushed the thought quickly out of his brain. ‘… when at thirty-four degrees, forty minutes eastern longitude …’ He bent over the side of his bunk and held on to himself with one hand, to the bucket with the other. ‘… the true time is 8:24 p.m.?’ Groaning, he tried to work out the angles in his head. Now whatever was inside him came up. So spheric trigonometry didn’t help, either. The brain couldn’t outsmart the belly, that woeful traveller. A little later John lay as straight as a rod, head and feet propped up, wanting to find out what made him sick.
First was the pitching round the imagined transverse axis of the ship, lasting for half a minute, up or down in a very irregular rhythm. That seemed to have most to do with the weakness in his stomach but also with that paralysis in his head, which by and by became as numb as the bucket under him. Whatever fitted together effortlessly on land here became differentiated by the degree of inertia with which it reacted to the ship’s movements: the head sooner than the body, the belly sooner than the stomach, and the latter more quickly than its contents. Then there were swayings round the ship’s longitudinal axis, a listing and rolling that merged with the up-and-down movements in ever-new combinations. John’s brain skidded back and forth like a pat of butter in a frying-pan and seemed to melt altogether. With his last strength he tried to discern any regularity, anything to which head, stomach, heart, lungs and all the rest could cling as a common denominator. ‘What’s the use if I can calculate a ship’s position but can’t stand its motions?’ He sighed and went on calculating, the bucket in front of his eyes. ‘Answer: 6:05 p.m. and twenty seconds,’ he whispered. Nothing could keep him from completing a problem.
It seemed to him as if the forefoot plunged in too deeply. Perhaps the bow had sprung a leak. The lower the leak’s position, the greater the water pressure. Water flowed into a ship at the rate of the square root of its height. So if a ship sank, she sank more and more inevitably from second to second. He’d better go above.
He got through the door after taking careful aim. On deck a fight started between his two poor hands and the rough elements, which, without further ado, put him here, threw him there, and jammed him between the wood and the rigging as it pleased. Each time he found himself again in a new situation, and the heavy seas fed him one huge mouthful of water after another. Now and then he saw people clinging to ropes or spars, looking where to dash for another hold at a precisely chosen moment. That was the only way they could move. It was as if they were trying to trick the storm into thinking they were a fixed part of the ship. They dared to move like humans only behind its back. From the direction of the mainmast the heard a weak bang and furious beating and clattering. Screams, muffled by the storm, reached his eardrums. The main topsail had been up until now; that was over. The sea appeared white, like boiling milk, and waves rolled in large enough for entire villages to find room in them.
Suddenly he was seized by two fists that didn’t belong to the storm. They dispatched him below deck with a speed equivalent to that of free fall. A curse was the only comment. In the midshipmen’s berth the boatman’s bucket had tipped over after all, despite its wide bottom. John felt as sick as it smelled. ‘Still,’ he said as he reeled over along with the bucket, ‘it’s the right thing for me.’ He sucked his lungs full of air to keep out any possible dejection. He was a born sailor: he knew that for certain.
‘That’s the best wind one can have,’ said the Dutchman. ‘The Portuguese norther, always beautiful from aft; we’re doing better than six knots.’ If anyone else had said it, John wouldn’t have understood the new word, but the Dutchman knew that his listener understood everything when he was allowed pauses. Besides, they both had a great deal of time on their hands because the sailor had sprained his ankle during the storm.
The weather remained sunny. Off Cape Finisterre they saw a huge mast drifting by, covered with crabs, already three years on the way if the captain was right.
At night they were approaching a brightly lit beacon. ‘That’s Burlings,’ John heard. An island with castle and lighthouse. Then he noticed something that reminded him of Dr Orme’s theories.
The beam rotated round the top of the tower like every single revolving light. John saw the beam wandering, but he also perceived that the light went on being visible on the right side even as the beam was again swinging back to the left, and that it was still on the left side when it turned up again on the right. Present and past – what had Dr Orme said about that? The light was most fully in the present when, flaring up, it met John’s eye directly. Whatever else he saw must have been lit up before and now shone only within his own eye – a light of the past.
Just then the Dutchman came up. ‘Burlings, Burlings,’ he grumbled. ‘The island is called Berlengas.’ John still stared at the lighthouse. ‘I see a trace rather than a point,’ he explained, ‘and I see the present only when it flares up.’ Suddenly he had a sad suspicion: perhaps his eye was lagging behind by one whole cycle? Then the flare-up would come not from the present but from the previous rotation.
John’s explanation took a lot of time; it became too long even for the Dutchman. ‘I see this different,’ he interjected. ‘A sailor has to trust his eyes as much as his arms, or …’ He fell silent. Then he picked up his crutches and hauled his swollen leg gingerly below deck. John stayed above. Berlengas! The first foreign shore beyond England. He was doing well again. He put his clenched fist on the plank-sheer, solemnly. Now everything would be different; a little today, all of it tomorrow.
Gwendolyn Traill was thin, with pale arms and a white neck, and so thoroughly wrapped in billowing garments that John couldn’t make out anything specific underneath. She wore white stockings; her eyes were blue, her hair reddish. She spoke hurriedly. John noted that she didn’t like this herself but felt it was necessary. In this she resembled Tom Barker. She had freckles. John observed the hair on her neck above her lace collar. It was time for him to cohabit with a woman in order to be informed. Later, as a midshipman, he would often be teased for being late, but in this matter he wanted to have a head start. Father Traill was saying something just then; John hoped it was no question. He was talking about a grave. ‘What kind of grave?’ asked John. He wanted to pay attention at mealtimes and make a good impression, because Mr Traill would write to Father about everything.
Gwendolyn laughed and Father Traill threw her a glance. The grave of Fielding. John answered that he didn’t know him and that altogether he didn’t know much about Portugal.
All that burring and hissing that came out of people’s mouths here was most unpleasant. People